This year will be a pivotal one for me, ushering in significant change and inviting introspection and retrospection. I will retire from my 40-year career at Spring Valley Nature Center in October, and with that comes the inevitable looking back at what I’ve accomplished there, the people I’ve worked with, the challenges faced, obstacles overcome, etc. I’ve also begun to look forward at what retirement could look like for me. I hear continuously from retired friends and acquaintances that I will absolutely love retirement and will find myself just as busy as ever – doing what I want to do, when I want to do it. I have already made mental lists of things I want to do, things I want to return to, and what I want to continue doing. A part of the coming year will include planning and preparing for that future.
I began my retirement countdown during the pandemic, possibly inspired by the ‘great resignation’ or whatever they were calling the recent shift in the American workplace that resulted in people leaving their jobs or deciding that they had had enough. While I also had a desire to retire early, I first wanted to focus on rebuilding the hollowed out staffing and programming at Spring Valley, and my circumstances would have made an early retirement inadvisable anyway.
Meanwhile, here I am, with one more busy year to get through. I’ve heard the term legacy mentioned, and to be honest, I do feel proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish with my skills and creativity over the years at Spring Valley. While I never set out to spend 40 years of my life working at one place, doing so has afforded me the opportunity to effect and witness dramatic changes and improvements, overcome occasional setbacks, benefit from incredible learning opportunities, and experience personal growth. I imagine that if I had ended up working several years at various places, my career retrospective would look and feel different. Spending 40 years at one place has given me a strong sense of stewardship. Nonetheless, I am ready to pass the torch on to some other worthy, skilled, and younger professional.
I am now trying to take note of and savor my last experiences at Spring Valley—last time for this event or that program, last time watching the prairie fill with flowers in late spring, etc. Many of these experiences I know I’ll miss; others, not so much. I suppose I may discover that I miss the regular routine of preparing for the coming season of events, programs, etc., but I’m often reminded that a regular routine can also be thought of as a grind, and that is exactly what I don’t want to do anymore.
While many of these last experiences are sure to be bittersweet, I’m happy that one notable experience will not be repeated. This particular ‘last’ occurred in September, on the last adult sightseeing trip I planned and led. A group of 15 people, mainly retirees, traveled with a coworker and I down into Kentucky and Tennessee, visiting Mammoth Cave National Park, historic sites in and around Nashville, and then up into Land Between the Lakes Recreation Area.
It was at the tail end of the trip, while exploring a living history farm in Land Between the Lakes, that we lost a participant. Or at least it seemed so. An older gentleman wandered down a gravel trail and didn’t rejoin the group as planned. After an extensive search of the grounds, he could not be found. The local sheriff’s department and a local search and rescue team showed up with a K9 search dog, but it seemed as though this guy vanished into thin air, or rather very thick woods in some rough terrain. Even after a helicopter arrived in the evening to search the area with infrared, no sign of him could be found, and the team decided to wait until morning to resume the search.
We all thought the worst had happened by this time, including his wife, who was also a participant on the trip. The next morning I received a call from the sheriff’s deputy that our missing guy had just walked out of the woods and stumbled into the search team’s planning meeting. He had apparently fallen the previous afternoon, hurt his back and couldn’t get up. Inexplicably, he just lay on the ground into the evening and through the night, finally mustering the willpower at dawn to get himself up and walk out to the site’s visitor center.
Alleluia! The story had a happy ending, but I ended up staying two extra nights in Kentucky in order to drive the gentleman and his wife home after he was released from the hospital, having suffered from severe dehydration during his ordeal. The rest of the group had headed home without us on our bus. Now, I’ve been planning and leading these trips for several years, and we’ve had a few minor mishaps, but this recent experience provided me with a whole new level of stress, as you might imagine. At the time, when one of the participants asked me when I would be retiring, I replied, “Tomorrow! As soon as I get back home with you people, I’m done.” So, yeah, that was my last planned excursion from the nature center!
As far as personal travel during the last year, my intense focus at work has prevented any significant time off for trips; however, Donna and I did visit family in Arizona in late winter, explored Cleveland and central Ohio during the summer, and also visited family in Michigan this past fall. The rest of my family has been jet setting off around the globe without me. Donna visited Iceland with three girlfriends in September, and Alma attended a wedding held in a castle in Scotland. My retirement dreams surely include more time for travel. Also, my love of trip planning will hopefully find an outlet beyond my own adventures. Right now, I’ve got a book on Ireland sitting on my nightstand, my assigned reading for a post-retirement adventure.
In other family news, Donna will continue her private therapy practice, at least until the spring of 2026, when she plans to join me in retirement, not wanting to miss out on the trip to Ireland. Her musical sideline, Ironwood, will continue as long as she wants, though she has already hinted at wanting to retire from that as well (again). As a gifted and passionate vocalist and musician who never declines an offer to step up to the mic, we’ll see how that goes. She did decide to go into the studio with several musician friends to record five original songs this past year, which is pretty awesome. (If you’re interested, you can find her releases by searching Donna Brooks & Ironwood in YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, etc.)
With both Alma and Will stretching their wings and getting ready to launch, the prospect of becoming empty nesters seems likely in the next couple of years. As a couple who started a family somewhat later in life, we won’t be retiring as grandparents (yet), but we won’t let that hold us back. Alma has a nice full-time job in nearby Crystal Lake working as a therapist who serves neuro-divergent youth (kids with ADHD and autism mostly). She and her boyfriend are currently planning to move into a place of their own soon. Will’s plan is to remain with us for at least a couple of years as he completes his undergrad work at DePaul University, actually taking classes online or at Harper Community College.
It seems only a few years ago that we were raising kids and shuttling them back and forth to school or to visits with friends. Our always modestly-sized home now feels like a cramped apartment, albeit with a yard and space for a garden. While I am envisioning my retirement future, we are both imagining what our lovely little home could look and feel like with two kids and one energetic dog (Alma’s dog Atticus) gone. We have pondered an eventual relocation out of state, but this is all conjectural at this point. Meanwhile, we continue to maintain, nurture and savor our little piece of paradise in Fox River Grove, IL.
I promise more regular posts in the coming year!